Scavenger: A.I.: (Sand Divers, Book Two)

by Timothy C. Ward

  Worse than that, her strange mood had dipped into hallucination territory as images came to mind of things she’d never seen: her wearing a black dive suit, standing before a computer, inserting a thumb drive; of Marco resting his head on a chair, eyelids half closed and wearing the smile of a drunkard. Was her fatigue causing a dreamlike prediction of where Dixon had gone and was doing?

  Her heavy legs lifted and landed one step at a time, but a seam she couldn’t trace separated her moving body from the sense that she was standing with her arms resting on the shelf she saw in her imagination. She was tempted to dig nails into that dark seam of confusion and rip it open, even if it meant she didn’t make survive the result. This existence was unsustainable, her will not strong enough, nor her mind aware of a way out.

  Her heart raced as she neared the top step. The world to the left of the wall was an impossibility she wanted no part of. Yet, she had to keep moving. Better to face her demons than let them remain hidden and plotting. Taunting her. Calling her weak.

  Her final step to reach the top step moved under the weight of ten mountains, pushed upward by a traitorous impulse to face terror before it drove her mad.

  Through glass doors at the end of the hall, and the room inside, standing beside Dixon and Marco, Quake stared at her with glowing red eyes. The power and light was a fire present only in the bowels of the earth where demons tortured babies. Her scream tore out before she could stop it.

  Dixon and Marco swung to show red fires as bright and lethal as Quake’s.

  Carroll canted back. Her hand slipped off the rail. She twisted and found a step to land on. Broken from their demonic stare, horns blared the most obvious of commands. Run!

  *

  W’s contact with Carroll’s M-MANs was gone. Something happened at the top of the stairs that nothing in Dixon’s activity log could explain.

  First, Rush. Now, Carroll. W knew Charlie’s clicker enthusiasm had broken enough of a hold for Rush to break free, but what had happened with Carroll? W opened up a program to identify similarities between their output and interactions with his M-MANs.

  Command chains broke within Dixon’s system. Quake took a DL charge to the chest, erasing ninety-one percent of W’s M-MANs in his newly developing system. W opened patches everywhere he could, but failed to stop Dixon before he shot Marco. More M-MANs wiped from W’s interface. W redirected power to Dixon’s brain. What he saw in the files on the computer were too valuable to expose to a potentially lost asset. Even with W’s backup to his interface, he couldn’t afford Dixon turning on him with that information. He sent M-MANs to create a barrier around the self-destruct program buried in Dixon’s lymph nodes. He’d use that only as a last resort. His M-MANs still maintained enough territory to regain control.

  Marco’s phone call came through Dixon’s hearing. W and Dixon aligned on the urgency to cease the call, but the damage was done before the DL shot broke Marco’s nose, and then his skull. The charge fried upward of ninety-five percent of his M-MANs, but also all of his body’s resistance.

  W executed the blueborn rebirth program, then switched back to Dixon’s subdirectory. Aligning on the command to stop Marco had linked a few thousand more M-MANs within Dixon’s neural pathways. When The Gov finished his threat, another ten thousand had linked up. Dixon’s cells saw the M-MANs as his own. W sent a message to Dixon’s visor to Go, now.

  Dixon left the top floor bunker with plenty of plasma in Quake and Marco for W to rebuild his M-MANs and a working computer that would have a functional secondary interface to take a load off of W’s main interface’s processing usage. W sent a thousand-count of M-MANs from the wall behind the computer on a path toward the pellet Marco had stolen when Dixon was honed in on the password box. The pellet, now in his pocket, would be enough fuel to halt his decay and turn him into a fluid, moving blueborn. One who could untie Quake and ambush the next wave of surface dwellers to enter the Plaza.

  With that resolved, W only had a few thousand other processes to manage, including stopping Carroll and regaining control over her and Dixon, the search for Rush and Star inside Fort Pope, and the rebirthing of Jules. All before The Gov arrived, which he had just told Dixon was impending.

  46 – Carroll / Dixon (5:07 am)

  Carroll jumped the last two steps with too much speed, stumbled over her feet, and bumped into the wall to face the next set of stairs. Energy pulsed and flared inside her limbs to the point of tremors. In the increasing darkness absent from Dixon’s dive light, steps forward came as difficultly as beam walking with kids shaking the pillars. Her teeth chattered. She stopped her hands shaking only by grabbing the railing. Her other hand fumbled with her pocket before retrieving one of Quake’s glow sticks. She cracked the plastic to release the yellow glow slowly filling its length.

  Pausing to adjust her eyesight to the light gave her a chance to breathe, and then take a step with forced normalcy, as though this were any other day walking with her dad down to the cafeteria below his office. Lies, shouted every ugly picture that could fit into her crowded brain. The sway of building sixty-three, the northern most and Springston’s tallest—Springston’s first to buckle and crumble; bricks, rock, glass, paper, people…freefall…screams; the blow upon her chest opening hollow upon hollow of the pit that would forever leave her broken; the three buildings behind Sixty-Three splashing apart like a wave of sand driven through by a divers slashing chop; Dixon’s vise grip on her wrist and yanking her away from his tent; their running through Shantytown’s pilgrim section, hopping over tent ropes, and the busy clutter of watchful, tearing faces; her pleas that they go back; urgency to save her parents as the ground thundered and the sky snapped—a picture for courage too far from her reach; she wept; her legs numbed; she tried jumping over a dog, hit its back and buried her face in sand; gristles burned in her eyes as hysteria wailed into the booms, cracks and shouted commands from everyone around her facing death and its dust storm of confusion and dread.

  That experience helped Carroll not completely lose it, though death’s new face—glowing red eyes in the skull of the one she loved…the last one alive—shook her to deeper levels of weakness. Her heel slipped. Three stairs bumped under her leg before her tail bone slammed on the edge of the last one. “Crap! Ow.” She turned to rub the pain. An image flashed of the three demons sprinting after her. No time to coddle your sore ass. She rolled forward, planted the knuckles of her glow stick-curled hand on a step, and forced quick strides to the next landing.

  Dixon, what happened?

  Why are you like them?

  Did he know them before?

  Did the M-MANs touch him in Fort Pope?

  The door to the fifty-fifth floor approached below. If one of them thought she went in, it would buy time, and if she went in and found no place to hide, she’d wish she had kept going. She twisted around another set of stairs. Each gained step became one more won for the parents she couldn’t save. Whatever force had unleashed under their city had followed her here, and every drop of hatred she felt when that power swept over her family would now fuel an outrage she’d use to put that dark bastard on its heels. And if her parents’ spirits blessed her, she’d use their strength to pierce through and erupt it at its core.

  “Carroll!”

  Dixon. Carroll stopped, inhaled to shout back. If she wasn’t careful, her need for him to be the Dixon she loved could blind her to the possibility that he wasn’t.

  He never said anything about M-MANs touching him, nor any fears that something was happening to him. No. She continued around to the set of stairs leading to the fifty-fifth floor.

  “Carroll, wait!”

  Same voice.

  Same concern.

  But closer. If she made it to the next floor, he would be too close to give her a chance to hide before he caught her.

  She pulled open the door to the fifty-fifth floor. Strands of cobweb smeared across her face, neck, and hands. She itched to rub them off but maintained her grip on the do
or and closed it gently. A squeak loud enough to give her away echoed into the small space. Another when she closed it into its hinge. She brushed her sleeves over her eyes, face, and every other inch of skin, then turned into pitch black. No neon yellow glow sticks fading in corners. Nothing. If only the volume of her breath could create light. It seemed powerful enough.

  Dixon had a dive light. He’d find her as soon as he opened the door unless she moved.

  She stuck her hands out, spread them wide, stepped toward the door-side wall, and brushed over bristly paper. Speed, friction, burn. She slowed to a less painful speed and continued until she hit a small ridge. Her palm spread down over smooth metal parted by a crevice. Elevators. Broken, as Quake said. Oh, if they could only work. She could get down to the surface and be far from the demons. She pressed the down arrow button, but nothing happened. No light. No movement inside. She left it behind, returning her hand to the wall to guide her in the dark until her glow stick revealed a door handle. She turned the knob and it opened. In the open dark was freedom to move. To her left awoke the screech of an opened door.

  She quickly entered the room and shut the door behind her as quietly as possible.

  *

  Dixon entered through the door with a matching metal on metal screech he’d heard echo up the stairwell. Inside was a dark hall and the glow of his dive light spreading red light into shadow. Two empty chairs sat along the far wall five steps ahead with a table between them, a few magazines and a lamp. Dixon walked past. Were this any other time, he’d have checked to see what magazines they were. Seeing Carroll’s fear and her urgency to run from him woke a part of him that wanted more than not to fail Warren.

  There was a door not far down on the left. He strode toward it. The doorknob turned. His dive light cast red over an enclosed waiting area with about twelve chairs. Curtis and Culhane Family Law read in stenciled black letters on the far wall as he walked closer to a window split down the middle. The left side was open two feet from the counter. He switched to dive view, enhanced his depth, pushing past the density of the walls to their outlines and objects stacked in each of the rooms.

  No live bodies.

  Then one popped out from a room down an inside hall, running to his left.

  And disappeared. Not behind anything. Just disappeared.

  He turned the knob on the door to his left and pushed into the first room. The body’s path started through two doors winding farther left until he stood in the hall where it disappeared. Still no sign. He blinked to dock view.

  Blinding lights filled his sight. A finger tapped his shoulder. He ducked and swung a low leg. Missed. His visor ripped free and peeled back with the suit’s head covering, pulling out hairs as a sharp point drove into his back, pinning him on his chest.

  *

  Carroll knew Dixon’s go to move in that situation was the leg sweep. Start with your best move against strangers, but train so you don’t have to use it against an opponent who knows you.

  Now she had him on his face, the visor off, and his suit off as well (after slipping under a quick finger to disengage the dive button.) She pressed the tip of a letter opener she found on a desk into the pocket between Dixon’s jaw and throat.

  “I will use this.”

  His tension deflated. “Carroll. What are you doing?”

  She pressed deeper. The opener was dull but would do its job if jammed hard enough.

  “Carroll!”

  She didn’t know. Was she past the line where she could kill him? She was angry for how he’d distanced himself since they left Fort Pope, but she wasn’t that mad. Not enough to kill. No, it was the monster in his eyes she aimed to slay.

  Was there a point to speaking with him? Would the M-MANs trick her into letting down her guard?

  Could she ask to get through to him instead of them?

  “How do I get the M-MANs out of you, Dix?”

  *

  Get them out? What was she talking about? He wasn’t infected. A dark path opened in the woods of his mind, but he lacked the courage to enter. “Why do you think I have M-MANs?” He tried turning his head to look her in the eye but her blunt object pinched his neck deeper.

  “Don’t bother lying. I can see it in your eyes. They glow like the other two’s.”

  “My eyes? The other two’s?” Quake and Marco? “What are you talking about?”

  His DL slipped out from the holster, taken by Carroll. Her elbow pinned his head down as the dull spear felt as though it were switching hands. “I can’t trust anything you say until you’re freed. Rush used this DL to shoot the M-MAN dogs. I wonder if I shoot you if it’ll get rid of the M-MANs. Colorado, what if they’re in me? I haven’t been feeling the greatest since about floor twenty.”

  Dixon yawned. “We’re sleep deprived. I don’t feel great either.”

  *

  “No. This is different. Mental…fog.” Carroll exhaled. The fog wasn’t like it was anymore. The harder she tried to sense it, the more obvious it became that it was gone. “I think…” No, I did. “I saw inside the room you were in before I reached the top of the stairs. Before that, I felt like I was standing still while I was climbing.”

  Oh my god. I’m infected, too. Her grip on the DL slowly turned it toward her. This might be her only chance while she retained awareness. She looked down the dark hole in its barrel. “I’m scared, Dix.”

  *

  The dull knife’s pressure waned on Dixon’s throat.

  “I’m scared, Dix.”

  Dixon jerked his head upward.

  “Ah!” Carroll flicked the DL at his face and fired.

  A spike drilled into his temple and severed through his face. Lightning bolts tore broken glass through every vein. Light became blindness. Sensory attachment to his extremities faded in the shivering buzz that rattled his head. Liquid leaked from his nose, over his chin, and through the slopes in his earlobes. Carroll’s weight fled his back, letting him roll over and press his hands into his pulsating temples. Deep into his eyes, a sucking and widening ache he couldn’t reach. He growled and hit his face to affect the pain, somehow.

  *

  Carroll stood, arm trembling, finger grip on the DL weakening as it rested by her hip. Her turn was next. Dixon’s pain seemed more intense than she could bear.

  “You’ll die if you do,” whispered a familiar but unwelcome voice.

  Where have I heard him?

  “I saved your life,” he said. Tiny hands pressed into the narrow spaces in her brain.

  Revulsion and terror lifted her DL to her temple and pressed the trigg—

  *

  Dixon had to force his eyes open through his splitting headache to see why Carroll was mumbling incoherent sobs. He rolled over to see her raising the DL to her head. He only had time to shove her with his leg before the DL popped. A short burst of blue light flashed into the hall. His attack hadn’t diverted the EM blast enough. Her limp body fell. He pushed onto his knees and reached both arms out to catch her. Her eyes were closed. Burnt hair stank thick into his nostrils. And something else. The DL clacked on the ground behind her. He gently patted her hair around where the DL had been pointing when she fired. A palm sized patch was crisp, and a little slick. He pressed his suit covered hand to the wound.

  Carroll didn’t move or make a sound. He didn’t feel a pulse. He unzipped his suit, pulled his hand out, and tried skin to skin.

  Thump-thump.

  Dixon slouched in relief. Though he was far from catching air. His head was a skull crushed by coffining, but at least he was conscious.

  “Wake up, Carroll.” Please.

  47 - Carroll / Dixon (5:23 am)

  “Dixon, report position.”

  The voice coming through his visor sounded mechanical, produced by keys connected into words but lacking a soul to speak them. Dixon unclicked the strap that tied the visor to the rubber hood and tossed the visor to a rolling thud against the wall.

  Carroll needed help but the hospital was to
o far for him to carry her. His bare palm touched the leaking patch of blood on her scalp. He pressed into the wound, arranged his feet and stood, carrying her as he kept pressure on her head. “Let’s see if we can find something in here for you.”

  Bright white light from the ceiling filled the hall to near blindness.

  “You won’t live long without me, Dixon,” the voice from the visor said. The threat sounded like Warren. Who or what else could it be?

  Might as well see. And test another theory. “I think I can only live without you, Warren.”

  Speaking against him felt like stopping a grenade with his mouth, but he made it through with his teeth intact.

  “Maybe, but it won’t last long.”

  If that is Warren, why is he using that computerized voice?

  “Reinforcements are close by,” Warren continued. “Can your wife survive without my help?”

  Without his visor, he didn’t know what time it was. But it might not be long from when the next group of divers arrived. The other two’s, Carroll had said, referring to their eyes like his. Infected. What did that have to do with Warren?

  He also had to consider why his instinct told him to leave the visor. How much good would his suit be without it? Why was he afraid to put it on? His memory of the last day, and even the last few weeks had too many holes to stretch together. He picked up and holstered the DL regardless.

  To Warren’s question about his wife’s survival, he thought, and then said, “She will. We both will.” Dixon left the visor as he carried Carroll to a door at the end of the hall. If he found a visor without Warren’s access, he’d use it. Otherwise, he was better off playing it safe.

  The door opened to a small room Old World books called a bathroom, minus the bath or shower. This had only a toilet, sink, and mirror. Would the sink work? He adjusted Carroll’s weight to his side and turned the faucet. His head throbbed with taunts of setting her down and caring for himself.